Vermont senators call for investigation of oil prices

The Associated Press

4/4/2008

MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont state Senate called Thursday for Attorney General William Sorrell to launch a criminal investigation of major oil companies to see if recent petroleum price increases might involve price-fixing, consumer fraud or other violations of law.

"At the same time that we are paying $3 and $4 a gallon for gas and oil, the oil companies are making record profits, billions and billions of dollars," said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham. "It's puzzling to us that so few politicians both on a state and national level are saying enough is enough," he told The Associated Press.

Shumlin, Majority Leader John Campbell, D-Windsor, and other Democrats joined the president of a statewide truckers' group and an official with a Burlington-based community action agency that helps provide heating assistance to low-income Vermonters to blast recent oil price increases.

The senators put their proposal in the form of a joint House-Senate resolution, which passed the Senate on by a vote of 30-0.

It called in part for the attorney general to take "aggressive and immediate steps to initiate an investigation of probable illegal and anticompetitive activities by oil companies."

Wherever the solution might come from, the problem is real and is being felt in Vermont, said Roland Bellavance, head of a Barre-based trucking company and president of the Vermont Truck and Bus Association, and Tim Searles, executive director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity.

Bellavance said the trucks in his fleet average 5.3 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, which is over $4 per gallon. The trucks cost more than $1,200 to fill up, he added. "We're spending $1.5 million more this year for fuel alone."